


Mind has Mountains

by SilverDoe290s



Series: Grindeldore Character Study Pieces [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (again), (tagging that because I can!), Bittersweet, By which I mostly just mean bitter, Canon Gay Relationship, Character Study, Despite appearances the ship is not the main focus of the story overall, Excessive reliance on symbolism, Gen, I would give a better description but I'm too exhausted, Introspection, Journey through the afterlife, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, References to Death and Violence, Should I tag this as psychological horror?, TW: Suicide, This will get dark, Title taken from a poem because I'm pretentious, because the afterlife operates on Dream Logic, canonical character deaths, guilt and self-hatred, mild psychological horror, some surrealism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-10-09 04:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDoe290s/pseuds/SilverDoe290s
Summary: "The afterlife was a small cottage in rural England."Or: I use the afterlife as an excuse for yet another elaborate character study.





	1. Letters

**Author's Note:**

> This work was initially envisioned as a one-shot. However, being 4,000 words in with no end in sight and with my life getting much busier very soon, I decided it would be less stressful to post it as a multichapter fic than to rush to get it all finished.
> 
> HOWEVER. I have put a lot into this emotionally and I feel it is currently still in rough form, so once the entire thing is done I may rework some parts and post it again in one take.

_O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall_    
_Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap_    
_May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small_    
_Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,_    
_Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all_    
_Life death does end and each day dies with sleep._  

\- "No Worst, There Is None", Gerard Manley Hopkins

The afterlife was a small cottage in rural England. 

This shouldn’t have surprised Albus, he realised, his fingers brushing the rough fabric of blankets he hadn’t slept under for far too long to justify their familiarity. 

The curtains were drawn but light poured through the cracks, catching every speck of dust that drifted in the air. 

Dust. It coated everything, clinging to the sheets and curtain, burying the scattered books and letters on his desk. 

Albus let out a brief, bitter laugh. Of course, this would be his hell. 

He’d hoped for... something else. Peace? Rest? Unreasonable requests, perhaps, given the state he had left the world in. Still, one needed some hope to hold on to. 

Nothingness would have been a pleasant option. Preferable, certainly, to eternity trapped in a home he had spent his childhood trying to escape; a room filled with letters detailing with exquisite precision every dream he wished he hadn’t - _should never have -_ had. 

He couldn’t argue it was undeserved. He’d _hoped_ he’d done enough since then to wash those years away, but he would hardly blame the universe for deciding otherwise. 

 

Time dribbled through his fingers like honey; sticky, cloying; pooling at his feet like dust on perfectly preserved parchment. 

Albus tried drawing the curtains, wondering if he would see familiar streets, people even. Instead, the room flooded with light – blinding, agonizing. 

He quickly pulled them shut again. 

The door was rickety and fragile, but it held fast against a whispered _alohomora_ (how naïve, to think the afterlife might yield itself to his magic so easily). Held fast, too, against later attempts to blast or kick it open. 

The dust was everywhere, clinging, choking. Every attempt to brush it off his robes only made space for a new layer, thicker than the last. 

The letters lay there on the desk, taunting Albus. There was no other distraction in the room to toy with; why should there be? He hadn’t _needed_ distraction when he had been seventeen and foolish. The contents of that desk had _been_ his distraction then; they had been his world, his way out. 

 _His way out._ The suggestion was obvious: he would not be allowed to leave this room until he had read the letters. 

Albus glanced at the door again. He had no way of knowing what lay beyond it; no way of knowing, even, that his bet would pay off and it would open for him. 

Between a chance at the unknown and the prospect spending forever sitting in this room, looking anywhere but at his desk, though, there was only one possible choice. 

 

Ink swam before his eyes, sprawled across the scattered sheets. Albus’ handwriting (looping, elegant) mixed with Gellert’s (spindly, sharp). Snatches of familiar phrases seared themselves back into the spaces scratched out for them in his mind, as if they had never left. 

The first few letters were innocent enough, all things considered. A respectable, scholarly correspondence between two bright teenagers; they stung only because Albus knew where they would, inevitably, lead. 

 _\- most impressed by your article, but I had a follow-up question – so delighted I could help! I was wondering if you had a reference of some kind for your claims about blood magic – that have historical precedence, of course; though some of this, I confess, I have discovered entirely independently – your histories intrigue me; we never learned this, at Hogwarts – of old magic; you have heard the Tale of the Three Brothers? - know of the Hallows, naturally, but – certain that further investigation would bear fruit, especially if you would lend your mind to the endeavour -_  

 

 _Innocent,_ yes, Albus thought as he leafed through the pages with shaking fingers. There was a certain sweetness that seeped through the letters, one that was not (yet) rotten. A freshness of youth; the thirst for knowledge, an eager and desperate yearning for life, to feel and taste and touch the world; selfish in that way that youth could permit itself to be, heedless to consequence, to any aspect of the world but the question of what it could offer them - 

And he wished to be there again. Even with the knowledge of what came next twisting his gut – even when every fibre of his being strained against the acknowledgement – he could not deny that he did. To be unburdened by guilt and drunk on possibility. To cut away nearly a century of baggage, of bitterness and regret; to strip the man who’s handwriting spoke so clearly to him of the venom, the hate that had come _later_ , until all that remained was shining and golden. 

 

He could stop reading. Put the letters down and sit on his bed, holding the warmth and eagerness that those early memories brought close to his chest like a Patronus charm. 

 _You_ _cannot_ , the nagging voice that had learned wisdom in its _(far too many)_ years, that knew of _consequence_ and _accountability_ , insisted. That warmth would erode in time under the force of knowledge that could not simply be wished away. The letters were there to force Albus to face his past, he knew instinctively. There would be no release until he had done so in full. 

( _Shut up,_ cried the petulant boy inside of him. _Shut up and let me forget._ ) 

 

He conceded several minutes of inner silence to that inner child before continuing. It was a paltry offering, but it quieted him enough for Albus to gather the strength to continue. 

The letters became probing, then. Dancing around each other; testing for compatibility, for openness to the other’s ideas. This was where a dangerous note might have crept in, Albus knew, if he had been open to hearing it.  

(It hadn’t struck him as _dangerous_ , then, of course – thrilling, enticing, delightful, but not dangerous.)  

 _\- have included a historical note on the Statute of Secrecy; which, as you can see, has stood on shaky ground since the beginning_ _-_ _often_ _wondered if it does not, perhaps, ultimately do more harm than good? - my thoughts exactly, dear Albus; though it has become so deeply entrenched by now, overturning it would require – on the history of the cloak. Returning to your remarks on the Statute, I have dug out some documents from the Hogwarts archives detailing the legal codes of societies where magic was openly practiced and respected. Quite remarkable! This was never taught to us, of course; in any case, I_ ~~_believe_ ~~ _hope you will find these of interest – remarkable indeed. I was struck by their emphasis on magic as a tool for_ _guidance_ _. I have not confided this in you before, nor indeed in anyone, but I have had visions – surprised, and I must admit more than a little touched, that you would share this with me. I quite agree, guidance is necessary; towards a greater good – great deal of force would be_ _necessary; employed for this greater good, of course. I note that the use of_ _old magic_ _is common to all the accounts you have sent me -_  

Their sentences continued to weave together like this; coiling around each other, a roiling knot lodged deep in Albus’ gut. There was no untangling their ideas, no separating the fuel from the flames. He could tell the story as though it had all been Gellert, later; Gellert who had led him astray with that intoxicating charm, Gellert who had planted seeds of darkness in his mind; but here at the end of his life there was no-one to lie to but himself, and the tale the letters told was damning. He had never been swept away in the sea of Gellert’s thoughts; he had stoked them himself. His words had become Gellert’s, as surely as Gellert’s had become his. 

He had fed Gellert’s hunger for power, mistaking it for idealism. Had offered kindling freely, eagerly, earnestly. He could not be absolved of responsibility for what those sparks had grown into - 

Oh, the things they had grown into - 

Albus felt sick.  

His hands clenched, and the letter crumpled in them. He stared at them, unseeing, for several minutes before he realized those hands were turning black. _What – How –_ he had _died,_ the curse should not be - 

Oh, he realized. Not the curse. The ink was running from the page, staining his skin. Was it meant to look like blood? Was it a message, a condemnation, from this place? Or simply his guilt-addled mind, condemning itself? The letter could not have needed this much ink when it was written, he thought wildly. 

He dropped the piece of parchment, now lily-white and taunting in its blankness, and stumbled backwards. Ink continued to ooze between his fingers, drip onto the floor. He would drown in it, he was certain; the flow would not be quenched until it flooded the room, suffocated the lungs that had brought it forth. 

Albus closed his eyes, chest rising and falling in uncontrolled panic, heart fluttering insistently ( _should it be beating at all? He was_ dead – _was he not?_ ) 

 _Control yourself,_ he told himself firmly.  

It was an inner voice he had honed well; the voice of the teacher, the one that commanded trust and respect; that encouraged you to yield yourself to its advice, that promised to guide you back to safer shores when this was all over. 

The fact that he had used it so often even when he knew that promise for an empty, if comforting, lie failed to diminish its effectiveness, even against himself. 

Ink lapped around his feet, sticky and dense. 

This reaction was absurd. What, exactly, did he fear? Death? He had _already_ died, and welcomed it. 

Guilt? He _knew_ what Gellert had fashioned his words into with intimate familiarity. The image of hands coated in ink would never hold a candle to the full reality of what had happened. If he had faced that unflinchingly, walked through the streets of Europe with his head held high as muggles took cover from the spells that bounced against the pavement in full acceptance of both the part he had played in beginning this and of his duty to _end it_ , then he had no right now to cower from a mere metaphor. 

Albus opened his eyes again. As his terror receded, so too did the ink; pooling together, vanishing like puddles drying up in the sun. 

 

This place responded to his emotions, then. That was... not a comforting prospect. Had he been at the mercy of some higher power, he might have trusted in its sense of justice. His own judgement was far more suspect, and not overly inclined to leniency. 

 

 There were two letters left on the desk. The letters he dreaded rereading the most, placed aside for as long as he could. Only two more, Albus thought, bracing himself, and he was done. 

 _My dearest Gellert,_  

 _I must_ _emphasize_ _how much your letters have meant to me (and your company, even more so). I feel that, what with getting lost in the thrill of research and discovery, I have not done so enough._  

 _I hope I have made it clear that I understand and appreciate how difficult it must have been to decide to share the things you have seen with me. I fear, however, that I have not._ ~~_I know how it feels_ ~~ __ ~~_Keeping a secret like that, it must_ _be_ ~~ _I cannot imagine how it is, to have had to keep such things to yourself for your entire life. I am deeply honoured that you have chosen me as your confidant in this, and can only hope that I never give you cause to regret doing so._  

 ~~ _I feel obliged to share_~~ ~~ _In_~~ _ ~~hopes that it will help you understand me, I~~  _ _I_ _have a confession of my own to make, in return, regarding my own personal motivations. You will notice that I have rarely touched upon the topic of my family. This is because_ ~~ _I find it difficult_ _to_ ~~ ~~_I_ _do not know how to_~~ ~~ _I am afraid you will_~~ ~~ _I didn’t want to have to think_ _about_~~ _it_ _is a delicate subject for me. However,_ _it_ _strikes me as deeply unfair that you should reveal so much of yourself to me, and I would give you nothing in return._  

 _When I first met you, I had lost my mother recently. This much, you already know. What you do not know is the sequence of events that_ _led_ _up to it._  

 _When we were much younger, a group of muggle boys saw Ariana perform magic in our back garden and abducted her. I cannot tell you the details of what they did to her. When we got her back, though, she was broken. She hasn’t been able to control her magic since. She lashes out wildly, refuses to speak for days at a time -_  

 _My father was sent to prison for retaliating. He is not a violent man – but he saw no other recourse, no legal action open to him._ _This_ _, you must understand, is why I feel so passionately about the Statute._  

 _We have received no reparations from the Ministry, not even a symbolic gesture to help us. Instead, we are forced to lock her inside the house as though we were ashamed of her. Our entire lives are shot through with secrecy and discretion._ _I ~~t is for this reason that a part of me feels unreasonably guilty to express my affection for you so openly. If I were responsible only for myself, I would gladly face down any judgement (or worse) that others attempt to cast against us, but how do I justify risking discovery with you when I am the one who must daily~~_ ~~_chastise_ _my_ _siblings for any action that might expose us as wizards? I do not wish to imagine the consequences if these letters were ever discovered. Still, I will not stop writing them; they are far too important to me to even consider doing so._  ~~

 _It was Ariana who killed our_ _mother._ _She did not mean to; as I said, she has no control over her magic, and sometimes it strikes blindly when she is scared, or upset (which is often). She is sweet, innocent. I do not even know if she is aware of what she did._  

 _I am sorry to have burdened you with this. I do not wish to_ _unload my troubles upon you, but I thought it necessary in order for you to understand why I see things the way I do._  

 _Yours affectionately, Albus._  

Albus’ throat closed up. This should not be the worst of it – worse than the guilt, the shame of allowing himself to be seduced by Gellert’s ideas – of _encouraging_ them. 

But it was. That he had made himself so vulnerable – that he had opened up, _bared_ himself to the other man, and _trusted_ that he would never hurt Albus with it -  

Gellert’s reply lay on the desk, alone where there had been a stack of papers. He did not need to read it, not really; he could recite passages of it from memory. 

Still, he picked it up. 

 _Albus, my love,_  

Albus hated how that greeting made his heartrate pick up, even now. Even knowing it had all been a game to Gellert – he must have picked out those words deliberately, _knowing_ how they would affect Albus. 

 _I am glad that you have written this. You hoped that I_ _would understand, and I assure you: I do. I feel your words deeply; the hurt, the injustice._  

 _I am sorry. “Sorry” is not strong enough, but it is all I can offer at the moment. Later, I hope, I will be able to give you more. No-one should have to endure what happened to your family. Together, we can ensure that no-one has to again._  

 _Would it be chivalrous of me to pretend I could not read the lines you have crossed out? I suspect it would, since that was clearly your intention, but I have never liked playing dumb._  

 _If you wish for me to be more discrete with you in future, I will of course respect that, as much as it pains me to have to do so. I’ll admit, I can be careless; I do so because I have always been ready and willing to defend myself, should things come to that. It had not occurred to me that you might not afford yourself to do the same, but I will keep this in mind. That said, I am glad you do not wish to discontinue our letters; I daresay I treasure them as much as you do, and some things are more easily expressed in ink than in person._  

 _The idea that men should not love each other is a muggle invention, and there will be no space for it in the world we will create together. Neither, of course, will we leave our most vulnerable open to violence from those who envy their abilities; I_ _promise_ _you this much._  

 _In the meantime, I can give only an open ear, and the promise that you can talk to me should you ever feel hurt or alone. As for your remarks about sharing my visions with you: it was a difficult decision, yes, but not once have I feared I will regret it._  

 _Yours Always,_    
_Gellert Grindelwald._  

The signature blurred as Albus looked at it. Oh. It appeared the dead could cry. Well, if they could breathe and have a heartbeat, then why not? 

So much caring, so much compassion and understanding, compressed into a single page. How could all of it be feigned? Had he really been so transparent, that picking out the exact words he needed to hear was child’s play to a man like Grindelwald? 

He could not allow himself to believe that a part of it – any part – had been genuine. That way lay danger; that way lay self-doubt and confusion that had paralysed him once before, kept him from wholeheartedly pursuing what he knew to be right. 

Knowledge of the dubious intentions behind them didn’t stop the words from crawling under Albus’ skin. If this was manipulation then it was an expertly crafted manipulation, one that continued to take on the form of love even when revealed for what it was. One perfectly shaped to soothe every raw nerve, crafted carefully from every fear, every hurt and insecurity, that he had exposed. 

Albus’ arm went up instinctively to wipe the tears from his eyes, but he stopped it half-way there. If one did not have the right to be sentimental in death, then when did they have it? 

He let the tears fall freely. When they stopped, the words had not changed, had not lost an inch of their passion or their tenderness. 

Albus folded the letter carefully, though he knew it would fade into nothingness as all the others had, and turned back to his desk, now devoid of papers. His fingers brushed against something small and cold. Looking down, he saw a small silver key resting on the wooden surface. 

Well. He couldn’t say he hadn’t earned it. 

Feeling hollow and scraped raw, too drained to muster up any apprehension for what would come next, Albus opened the door. 


	2. Who We Were

When Albus stepped through the door, he was plunged into darkness. He wondered, briefly, if the world had finally heard his plea for rest and lead him into the void – but, no. He could still feel – feel his arms and legs, feel the burning, sinking emptiness clawing at his gut. Feel his thoughts curling like smoke, clouding up his mind.

There was solid ground beneath his feet, plaster flaking under his fingers as he ran them along the length of the wall. The air was not _cold,_ precisely; rather, he felt the utter absence of warmth. It numbed him; there was no breeze, not the slightest draft or movement, to return feeling to his skin.

The solidity of darkness soon gave way to strange, winding shapes. He was standing in a corridor. An endless corridor that chose to twist left and right, up and down, seemingly at random, peppered with doors at regular intervals. A transitory place; that made a great deal of sense. Most old folklore had some kind of transitory place to bridge the gap from life to death.

The thought died as soon as it met the unnaturally still air, but it spurred him into movement.

The floor was not as solid as it appeared, Albus discovered when he took his first step. Planks of wood here and there were rotten or outright missing. He wondered whether falling between them would make him vanish completely, or simply take him somewhere else. He could test it, possibly – but stepping close to the edge filled him with too much dread to seriously consider that possibility.

A cursory glance revealed that the doors were not all identical, at least – but all seemed equally impassable. Some were boarded up with planks of wood; others bolted shut; keyholes clumsily taped over, or melted together. Albus could not shake the sensation that someone before him and gone to great lengths to close them off, one by one. _Himself,_ most likely, in some form or another. Well, the afterlife did like its metaphors, it would seem.

This time, he made no attempt to force his way through. There were many parts of his mind he might have sealed off, and most of them for good reason. Some parts of his mind were not fit to see the light of day. Still, there was a certain measure of morbid curiosity there. Whatever lay behind there was as certain to be fascinating as to be painful.

There was nowhere to go but straight ahead. Time made the doors blur together, and the turns had been so many they seemed to straighten themselves out. Albus’ feet counted out a mindless rhythm, just barely dodging gaps in the flooring; _one two, one two, three four five -_

His footsteps landed loudly in the silence, resounding against the backdrop of his thoughts. Words tapped at the edge of his consciousness, words that had only just been pried loose and now found themselves with nowhere else to go. They mixed with images, swirling together like the spring’s first rain meeting snow and turning it into a dirty, muddy sludge that spread everywhere underfoot.

 _(_ _Albus_ _, my love)_ _._ Fingers entwined, foreheads pressed together. Searching eyes, fingers brushing skin; that longing for _closeness,_ for someone who could pluck free the thoughts that cluttered his head and breathe life into them.

The same words wielded later, sharp and mocking. _Albus, my love, didn’t you promise not to fight me?_ Mismatched eyes, wild and blazing. Shattered cobbles, Gellert kneeling and refusing to speak, just laughing, broken and mad.

_O_ _ne two, one two three_ _._

Weakening floorboards, so many doors he’d never pass through. 

 _I promise you this much._ Albus didn’t know which would be worse, if Gellert had easily discarded every promise he’d ever made or if this was _exactly_ what he’d meant by them.

_T_ _wo three four, two three_ _._

_You can talk to me should you ever feel_ _hurt or_ _alone,_ the irony there was biting. He had, after all, never felt _more_ hurt or alone than when Gellert was through with him.

Were the gaps getting wider? The walls were certainly narrowing, pressing in against him. Several times, he caught himself just before mis-stepping. 

The hallway pulled him along despite himself, _two three four, two three four_ _._

The memories began to drift away, and Albus released them gratefully. 

The floorboards were barely splinters; at any moment, they should give under his weight – except they did not. After some time, they barely even creaked or bent when Albus stepped on them.

The hallway was a puzzle without a solution, perhaps, but all of a sudden Albus felt no pressing need to search for one. He had solved enough puzzles, set enough in motion that the world could – he hoped – handle itself without him. That had always been the plan; and even if not, there was no way back to it, so why not stay lost here? The darkness was comforting, in its own way; nothing could track him down and find him here, not even the thoughts he had cast off. 

It had been so long since he had felt this kind of freedom (excepting, perhaps, the moment when Severus had raised his wand and Albus knew he would go through with the plan they’d agreed upon). Even the air felt lighter, sweeter. Albus breathed in - 

* * *

 

  _Breathed in fresh air, heavy with pollen and the aftermath of rain. Long strands of grass tickled his legs, leaving drops of water on his trousers._

_“Albus! Al, wait up!”_

_Albus turned to see a girl running towards him, face slightly red from the effort, and stopped in his tracks, a smile on his face. He’d hoped to find a place to hide away and study by himself for the day, but he didn’t mind Ariana’s company in the least. She always kept things interesting. “I thought you were supposed to be helping Kendra in the kitchen?”_

_Ariana flushed even harder. She’d always been terrible with chores, but excellent at worming her way out of them. “Well, yes...” she admitted, “but I think she forgot about asking me.”_

_Albus did his best to keep a stern face._ _It_ _was no easy task, when confronted with Ariana’s excitement. “You should still help her.”_

_Ariana pouted. “I don’t see_ you _helping,” she muttered._

_“I’m a student now,” Albus pointed out primly. “I need the time to study.”_

_Ariana’s face lit up at that. She was playing with a buttercup she had plucked while they talked, twirling it between her fingers and staining their tips yellow. “Yes! That’s exactly why I wanted to talk to you! I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day – you know, about using magic for_ _transfor_ _-_ _transla_ _-”_

_“Transfiguration?”_

_“Yes, that. Well, you said – that it’s about suggestion, right? I was confused by what you were saying, but I think I understand it now. You meant that... things don’t just change suddenly, right? You have to... to follow the process, in your mind.”_

_Albus smiled, a sudden warmth building in his chest. He’d been reluctant to discuss his current topic of study when Ariana had first asked, too used to such questions ending in the rather discouraging phenomenon of other students losing interest and wandering off just when he’d reached the most interesting part of the explanation. It would seem the time he’d spent away from home had made him forget just how bright his sister really was. If she picked things up so quickly now, he could only imagine what she would be like when she was old enough for Hogwarts. She would be a Ravenclaw, for sure._

_An image flashed through his mind of Ariana in a blue scarf and Hogwarts robes tucked up in the Ravenclaw tower. She would be barefoot, of course – Albus doubted age or etiquette could ever change that habit of hers – long hair falling in her face, the way their mother always scolded her for letting it. She would love the view of the stars from that tower, and her magic would develop so much faster once she had access to all the books in Hogwarts’ library, not just the ones Albus managed to bring home for the summer. He couldn’t wait for her to be old enough to join him; she would love it there, and he had missed having someone who listened with her kind of_ _curiosity_ _and fascination. Even_ _Elphias_ _waited with barely concealed impatience for Albus to get to something he could copy in his own essays._

_Ariana’s expectant gaze brought him back to the current conversation. “It’s a bit more technical than that, but you’ve certainly got the gist of it. You have to find the continuity between what a thing_ is, _and what you wish it to be. Your wand and incantation will guide most of the process automatically, but you have to -”_

 _Ariana was nodding eagerly. “It has to feel like_ _it_ could _be possible, or it won’t be possible at all. The magic follows what you see, in your head. I_ get _it.” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Al, can I show you something?”_

_Albus knelt down to be at eye level with Ariana, smiling softly. “I’d love to see it.”_

_Wordlessly, Ariana held out her hands, cupping the buttercup she’d picked between them. For a while it sat there as Ariana’s brows creased in frustration, but then slowly, ever so slowly, it began to lift into the air. A soft gasp escaped Ariana and the flower_ _tethered_ _. Albus reached out to place a hand on her shoulder. “That’s very good, just keep focusing. I can tell you know what to do, you just need the confidence to push your magic into it.”_

_Ariana nodded, eyes narrowed. The buttercup’s stem thinned out and_ _lengthened, petals and leaves drooping and then dividing into individual threads. Then_ _it_ _dropped to the floor, a strange object half-way between a flower and a feather._

_Albus picked it up and turned it over in his hand. A fascinating choice of transfiguration. Both objects had a similar lightness to them that Ariana must have picked up on; the transformation was delicate and difficult._ _It_ _must have_ _required_ _a great deal of sensitivity to separate out every strand of_ _plumage_ _._

_When he looked back up, though, Ariana seemed crestfallen. “It’s still_ green _.”_

_“Colour is one of the last attributes you need to worry about. Once you’ve captured the essence of the thing, the rest follows easily.” He gave the feather one last glance before handing it back to her. “What colour were you aiming for?”_

_“Grey.”_

_“Well then, I wouldn’t be too disappointed. Green looks far better -”_

_“Ari!”_ _Aberforth’s_ _voice came crashing through the relative quiet. “Albus,” he added begrudgingly. “Ma wants you both back_ _home_ _, now.” His eyes narrowed as he took in the scene. “Albus, have you been showing her magic again?”_

_“She wants to learn,” Albus protested._

_“She’s_ nine years old. _What_ _would_ _Ma say if I told her?”_

_Albus barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes._ _Aberforth_ _had recently discovered that he could gain favour – at Albus’ expense – by reporting all of Albus’ activities to Kendra, and he was revelling far too much in this discovery for Albus’ taste._

_“You wouldn’t do that, would you?” Ariana cast a pleading look in_ _Aberforth’s_ _direction. It was a look she’d perfected over the years, and it never failed to wind_ _Aberforth_ _and Percival around her finger – though Albus and Kendra were immune, and she knew better by this point than to try it on them. “I missed you both when you were away all year, I just wanted a chance to spend time with Albus. You as well, but you were busy._ _Can I help_ _you take the goats out_ _tomorrow?”_

_Aberforth_ _, predictably, melted. “Fine -_ _I won’t say anything,_ _but you both need to get home now!” Albus chuckled, earning him a dark look from his younger brother. “You should’ve just stayed at school for the summer, you’re a bad influence. Shouldn’t you be the_ responsible _one, or something?”_

_Ariana turned back to look at him, eyes gleaming triumphantly, and Albus just shook his head in bewilderment._ _However_ _great Ariana’s talent for magic was, her talent for obtaining what she wanted was far greater. Either the other two men in the house would learn_ _to see through her innocent-little-girl act soon, or she_ _would go completely unchecked once she was old enough to acquire a taste for actual mischief._

_The bewilderment softened into pride. Ariana was glowing, whether with satisfaction – she had tucked the green feather behind her ear now – or with the last remnants of magic, and Albus felt a rush of certainty that – unchecked or not – she would be a wonderful witch one day._

_She was still looking at him, so Albus winked. “Keep practicing,” he whispered, just low enough to avoid being overheard by_ _Aberforth_ _._

_Ariana beamed in response. The expression broke out across her whole face; it was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, casting away her usual far-away dreaminess that she hid behind a curtain of hair. “I will,” she whispered back._

* * *

The memory faded, leaving an aching feeling of loneliness in its wake.

They had been happy, once. It was easy to forget that – forget how they had once been so close, fit so seamlessly together, instead of every other word they spoke digging painfully and uncomfortably into the others. 

Why this memory, and why now? The memories of him and Gellert had a lesson in them, at least – or, if nothing else, a justified punishment. There was nothing to be gained from reminiscing on the times his family had been happy. However foolish he’d been when he was young, he had understood that much at least. Nostalgia just lead to _what ifs,_ which lead to bubbling frustration that he had no choice but to bite down.

The traces of dappled spring sun and dew-laden grass lingered in the empty hallway. When Albus looked up, he realized the latch on the door in front of him had fallen off, leaving it slightly ajar.

Cautiously, Albus pressed his fingers against it. The wood felt real and solid, lending resistance as he pushed.

* * *

He was in a kitchen – his kitchen, to be precise. As soon as he passed the doorway it clicked shut behind him, the moment of its closure resonating in the silent air around him.

The table was set. Albus’ gaze jumped to a vase holding an eclectic mix of poppies and dandelions; red and yellow shades unfurled, soft and warm against the backdrop of a worn white tablecloth. Ariana’s handiwork; on the rare occasions Kendra used flowers for decorative purposes, they were muted, complementary, well-arranged. If she saw these on the table, she would throw them out and demand that Ariana stop bringing weeds into the house. A few of the dandelions had started to lose their petals and white fluff fell into the water and clumped around the bottom of the vase. A water jug, clear and half full, rested just left of the vase, and with five plates laid out around the sides of the table.

After all that had come before, the scene was strangely peaceful. The air felt cool and light, almost as if someone had opened a window elsewhere to let a breeze in, but for the lack of a breeze.

Albus looked around the room. There was a door to either side; the one he’d come in through, and another that he didn’t remember from his youth.  He supposed he would have to find another key to pass through it, though there was no obvious challenge he could face to obtain it. As a matter of fact, he had no particular incentive to search for it; staying in this room – pleasantly lit from a source he couldn’t see, neatly arranged, serene – seemed a far more appeal prospect than re-emerging in the dark, endless corridor that had brought him here. 

Still, he would search. He was supposed to be moving on, he supposed, or something along those lines – as though he hadn’t lived his entire life trying to move on from here.

As he moved, rough wool brushed Albus’ skin. Looking down, he saw he was wearing a plain shirt and pants, the kind he hadn’t worn since he’d stopped having to make any attempt to fit into a provincial half-magic, half-muggle town. He’d lost a great deal in height as well; his skin was smooth, his hair auburn and tied back in a messy ponytail. 

He hadn’t noticed the changes when he’d first stepped through the door. It had felt so natural to appear as his younger self between these walls, it hadn’t even registered that there was a change. 

There weren’t many places to hide something in the room. Having scanned every other surface, Albus moved to check the top shelves, only to find he was too short. Well, there was nothing like remembering his youth to take him down a notch, Albus supposed – quite literally. He would have to resort to bring a chair from the table over to the counter.

Carefully – he had too many memories of Kendra yelling at him for his clumsiness to move with anything but the greatest care – he pried open the top drawer.

A collection of their best plates and cutlery – gifted to Kendra for her wedding. She kept – _had_ kept them for special occasions, though what _kind_ of special occasion that was Albus didn’t quite know, since they never seemed to occur.

His gaze landed on a smooth porcelain teacup tucked at the very back of the shelf. Thin, spider-like cracks ran through it. He reached out on intuition, fingers curling around the handle -

And over-balanced. The chair toppled out from underneath him and Albus jerked backwards just enough to bring the entire drawer of dishes down on top of him, shattering as they hit the floor.

* * *

“Albus?”

A lilting voice broke through the shock of the fall, sharper than the pieces of glass and porcelain that had embedded themselves in his skin. For a few sweet, disoriented moments he couldn’t place _why_ that voice would shock him. It was warm, familiar, nostalgic; perched somewhere between concern, confusion and just a hint of confusion.

Then he remembered _why_ he hadn’t heard it in so long, and his stomach churned.

“You’re hurt,” Ariana said as Albus pulled himself back against the press, ignoring how every cut along his skin stung as he drew his knees in, sucking in deep breaths before he would be prepared to look up at her. “Let me help.” 

* * *

 

Seeing her in a memory was one thing. There, they could both be who they once were; there, she was whole and he was unburdened by years of guilt.

Ariana knelt at his side, gently pulling shards of glass from his skin, and Albus couldn’t find the presence of mind to stop her, nor the strength of will to meet her eyes. His gaze wandered overhead, searching for anywhere else to look – the vase of flowers, the unadorned walls.

“Al? What’s wrong?” Ariana halted and drew back just enough to meet his eyes.

She didn’t remember. Of course not; this Ariana was still nine years old, still brimming with talent and potential, with the whole world ahead of her. 

She wouldn’t be so gentle and caring if she did. He didn’t deserve it, not from _her;_ not from the one he had failed so abysmally in his duty of care.

“You’re scaring me.” Ariana’s eyes were wide, her voice quivering. She bit her lip and looked at him; he could _see_ her mind working, trying to figure out what was happening. “Please say something.”

Albus’ heart clenched. All his life he had thought that if he could only see her again, he would find a way to apologize – maybe not to make things right again, that could never be done, but at least to beg for her forgiveness and make sure she knew that he loved her.

Now they were here, though, it seemed all he could do was hurt her still.

He _wanted_ to beg forgiveness, but he could see this was not the best choice here. She wouldn’t understand, it would only make her more distressed.

“Ariana,” he said carefully, searching his memories for any situation he had handled as a teacher that might give him an idea for how to proceed. 

His mind drew a blank. He was not a teacher here; he had no words of wisdom for her, nothing to offer that might help. If anything, she should be the one teaching him – but he could not ask that of her. “...It’s nothing.” 

He had no right to burden her with the future.

Ariana set her jaw and lifted her eyes. “No, it isn’t. Is it something Abe said? I know he’s harsh with you sometimes, but he doesn’t realize it bothers you. I think he just thinks you’re untouchable, and he needs to take you down a peg just to be even. I can ask him to be more careful -”

Albus chuckled wryly. “Aberforth has said a lot of things about me. He’s right about most of them.”

Ariana moved to pull out another shard of glass and he allowed himself to look at her properly. Kneeling on the floor, her face was screwed tightly in concentration; she moved carefully, delicately, with the same deftness she applied in her magic.

He had seen himself in her, once. When she still looked up to him, hung on to his words and was eager to show him what she’d learned. When he they had still talked easily to one another. 

Tears stung the edges of Albus’ eyes and Ariana stilled again. 

“Please tell me what’s wrong. I won’t tell if you don’t want me to, I promise.”

Albus swallowed. There were _too many_ words fighting to spill from his lips, and none of them could be allowed to.

Ariana must have seen something in his face, though, because she got to her feet and took a shaky step backwards. “ _Tell me,”_ she said, and her image _flickered_ suddenly, from nine years old to fourteen and back. “I thought you trusted me.”

Albus picked himself up and help up his hands in a placating gesture. “I do. It isn’t that -”

But Ariana wasn’t listening. She was her fourteen-year-old self now, and backing away from him; as she moved, the shards of glass and porcelain lifted from the ground and began to spin around her. A familiar knot of bitterness and frustration welled up in him; he could never guess what would set her off, never find the right thing to say or avoid the wrong one. He had thought maybe, with time and experience, he would see something now that his younger self had missed; instead he found himself sucked back into the same nauseating bubble of confusion and helplessness.

Albus stepped forwards, reaching out. Touch had always calmed Ariana – at least, Aberforth’s had. His own was too awkward and tentative to offer much comfort. 

Ariana flinched away from the gesture, and Albus winced.

The swirling pieces of broken plates left shallow cuts on the surface of Albus’ skin, and blood trickled down his arms and dripped onto the floor. Ariana was heaving deep breathes, face hidden in her hands.

Slowly, she lowered her hands, and the room stilled, glass clattering unceremoniously back onto the floor. “I remember,” she gasped.

The words pierced Albus. He couldn’t discern the tone of her voice past the ringing in his ears; was it accusatory? Hurt? Or just a statement of fact? A part of him didn’t want to know.

Did she remember who had done it?

“I’m sorry,” he began gingerly. Blood still dripped from his skin and even as he tried to pick out the right words, he suspected there was no such thing. “I never meant...”

“ _Don’t._ ” Ariana was still taking deep breaths, arms wrapped around herself and fingers digging into her skin. “Could you...” her face smoothed over, voice calming just a little. “Could you just... be quiet? Please?”

“Of course,” Albus conceded, even though he didn’t want to – didn't want to leave this hanging between them. Even those two short syllables made her shudder, as though someone had flashed a _lumos_ spell directly in her eyes.

 _“Be quiet!”, Ariana had yelled in desperation, hands clasped over her ears. “Shut up, shut_ up _, stop fighting!”_

As Ariana moved to sit in a chair at the table, Albus began to gather the broken dishes from the floor. It didn’t matter, he knew. This was not their kitchen; it was just a replica he had fabricated. There was no real reason to keep it tidy – but the motion was familiar and comforting and he could not bear the silence, the stillness, that otherwise wrapped around them.

Ariana was the first to break it. “I miss you,” she whispered in a cracked, rusty voice.

Albus froze. Those weren’t the words he’d expected, and he didn’t know what to make of them. Did they hold forgiveness, or just enough loneliness to override the knowledge of what he’d done? “I’m right here,” he said in the most quiet, soothing voice that he could muster.

“That isn’t what I meant. I miss you being my brother.”

Albus picked up another shard, ignoring how it dug into his hand. The pain kept him focused, kept him from selfishly throwing his own doubts and self-recrimination in Ariana’s direction. “I still can be,” he said, “if you will let me.”

Ariana let out a strangled noise. “No, you don’t _understand._ Please look at me.”

Albus turned. Ariana’s eyes were red and puffy, her hair wild and tangled, her fists bunched into her dress and crumpling it. For a while, she just looked back at him, and Albus didn’t dare look away. “Are you happy?” she asked at last. 

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you happy?” she repeated. “You were so alone when we were younger. I know I just made it worse, so... are you happy, now, at least?”

Albus wanted to refute her claim; to say that he hadn’t been lonely, and if he had then she had nothing to do with it. But Ariana hated it when people dodged her questions; hated it even more when they lied to her.

He considered the question. What was happiness to him, now? He certainly hadn’t felt the simple, uncomplicated joy from when they were children and he taught Ariana new spells in a long time. The feverish euphoria of being alone with Gellert, trading thoughts and touches between haystacks, even less so.

But there were still things that brought him joy, enough to temporarily ease the chains of guilt and complications he had wrapped himself up in. The wonder in the eyes of students seeing Hogwarts for the first time. Fawkes stealing sweets from his desk. Answering students’ questions, solving crossword puzzles. The sight of students laughing together, huddled over books, oblivious to the storm gathering outside the castle walls.

The thought, the hope, that the sacrifices they had all made would be enough to curb that storm so that they could remain oblivious.

“I am... satisfied, with what I have done in life.” In the latter half of it, at least.

“That isn’t what I asked,” Ariana said lightly. The tear tracks had faded, and her expression settled into one of contemplation. “Are you still running away? Or playing the reluctant martyr?”

Albus frowned, and Ariana gave him a watery smile. “I know I kept you tied down. Have you found a place you want to be yet, or just tied yourself down elsewhere?”

Albus’ chest ached. “Where I want to be is impossible,” he said at last, “but I am at peace with where I am now.” And then, because he couldn’t let her other words go unanswered, “I did love you, you know. I wish I had known how to show it better – but I wanted a better life for you.”

Ariana reached out and took his hand, the way he had held hers when they were running off through the fields and he wanted to make sure not to lose her from her sight. “I know. I was closest to you, before. But then I couldn’t keep up with you anymore. Aberforth learned how to love me anyway, but you never had that kind of patience.” 

Albus wished there had been some kind of reproach in her voice, but it was empty, a statement of unchangeable fact, and the reproach clawed its way up from inside him instead. “I would like to think I’ve learned patience since,” he answered mildly, “but I did still care for you, even if I lacked the patience to do it right.”

“Of course.” Ariana’s voice wavered again. “That’s why you couldn’t stand to be around me. You’ve never liked problems you couldn’t solve. When caring becomes too much for you, you lock it up and throw away the key.”

It was Albus’ turn to flinch from her. Did she know somehow, or was that just an unlucky turn of phrase?

“That way,” she added, voice definitely trembling now, “you can care safely, from far away.” She twirled a strand of hair around her finger, gripping it too tightly for the gesture to be casual. “I didn’t want your abstract, distant love. I wanted you to be my _brother._ ”

He’d thought he was making his plans for Ariana’s sake, at the time. It was what Gellert had promised him, what Albus had _believed_ in – had cast off his better judgement for. A world where people like her wouldn’t be hurt. Where he would have the _power_ to protect her.

There were other reasons, of course. The desire for freedom; the thrill of discovery; his infatuation. But he had thought he was helping her.

Albus looked back at his sister, small and shaking, trying so hard to hold herself together, and for the first time he felt he understood what she needed. He stepped forwards, wrapping his arms around her. For a few moments she did nothing, tense and unresponsive, but then she relaxed and hugged him back. 

* * *

 

They stayed like that for a while, Ariana’s tears forming a wet patch on his shirt just above his shoulder. Eventually, she drew back, smiling sadly. “You need to keep moving,” she said. “I’ll see you when you find your way out.”

“Do you... do you remember? Which of us killed you?” The question was stupid, selfish, and Albus cursed himself as soon as it found its way out. He had made progress, for once, only to set it back like this...

But he had been holding it back the entire time, and he _had_ to know, however selfish that need was.

Ariana just laughed. “Does it matter? It might have been Gellert. Would that make it easier? It could have been you, just as well. Would you rather find another reason to hate him, or another justification for that responsibility you carry everywhere? Either way, I never got to live. And both of you are behind that.”

“I’m sorry,” Albus said again, helplessly. 

“Stop saying that.” Ariana hugged him again, a shorter squeeze this time. “What happened, happened. Guilt just makes you pull away from it. I’d rather have you be _here_ than be sorry.”

“I will be,” Albus promised.

“I know. Goodbye, Al.” 

* * *

 

The kitchen flickered again and Ariana was lying motionless on the floor, her blue eyes wide and gazing blankly at the ceiling. Her hair fanned out beneath her, her lips parted slightly, a trickle of red running from her nose the only visible sign of trauma. Her skin was pale and cold; as he watched, it began to crack like ice that had had too much pressure applied to it. 

Albus fought the urge to stumble back, to look away. He owed her that; he’d promised it.

She looked different now than when she’d actually died, like a nightmarish attempt to overlay hundreds of distorted memories and recreate the scene. The cracks hadn’t been there in reality, he was fairly certain, nor had she looked _quite_ so stiff and lifeless.

Something silver glinted in her hand. A strange feeling of detachment washed over Albus, as if he were watching himself from above as he knelt down to inspect it. Another key. 

Carefully, steadily, still feeling so very far away from himself, Albus pried open her fingers and picked it up.


	3. What you didn't feel

The corridor was brighter than when he’d left it; the light came in through elegant gothic windows that weren’t there before. The sections of wall between them writhed with patterns. Intricate Celtic knots, gargoyle heads. Doors and archways, still impassable but more clearly visible now. 

The light was cold, so very cold; goose bumps shivered over Albus’ skin. His clothes were stiff and frozen; the blood from a hundred shallow cuts had seeped into the fabric and dried there, leaving a patchwork pattern of dark red. 

Albus watched from somewhere beyond himself as he approached the wall and traced its patterns with something approaching reverence. The eagle, the serpent; the lion, the badger. House crests. The texture of the walls seemed to ripple and then smooth itself out.  

The stone hurt to touch, frost melt melting beneath his fingertips and leaving a thin stream of water to trickle to the floor. 

Albus breathed in deeply. The strange lightness that had settled in his chest seemed to creak and expand along with his lungs; the air scratched at his throat on its way down. 

He felt light-headed. The light _hurt_ ; it was a distant sort of pain, however. The kind he could bear with, the kind that was almost comfortable; it dug tiny pinpricks into his skin, wrapped around him like a shield and silenced all other sensation. 

* * *

 Images flashed through his head in rapid succession. Empty, glassy blue eyes staring at his kitchen ceiling. A trickle of blood, skin cracking like smashed porcelain.  

* * *

 Albus watched himself wrap his arms around himself to contain a shiver; watched himself slump against the stone wall, watched his breath condense the air into a solid white. His mind was still carefully blank, delicate as the stone knots that laced the surface of the walls around him.  

He had stood in this hallway so often; as student, as teacher, as headmaster. The walls shifted constantly, trying to settle on a moment in time to replicate. Bits of stone were chipped off; ivy grew, turned red, withered away again. Red-gold banners flapped in the wind and faded back into nothing. The constant shifting made Albus dizzy and somewhat nauseous. His eyes searched the wall for a constant to latch onto; a sliver of stone, a hollowed-out carving that was guaranteed not to change with its surroundings. 

Was this what closure felt like? This gaping lightness in his chest, only a hair’s breadth away from emptiness? Was _this_ what he’d been chasing all his life, this ice-like wall of knowledge that inserted itself surgically in his mind and kept him from accessing any emotion?  

 _When caring becomes too much for you, you lock it up and throw away the key._ The words welled up in his mind unbidden; they were both so recent and so terribly appropriate.  

Was that what was happening, then? Was there still feeling of some kind swirling beneath the frozen surface of his mind? He really couldn’t say; it was too far from him now, and he didn’t feel like walking back towards it.  

* * *

“ _You do care,” he claimed with complete certainty as his heart ached with sympathy for the boy – no, young man – standing in his office. "You care so much, you feel like you will bleed to death with the pain of it.” He spoke the words steadily, with a calm he knew full well others might call_ infuriating _, because if he did not maintain the requisite level of detachment his own advice might strike too close to home._  

* * *

The scene of his office wavered, and Albus managed to pull himself back from it with surprising ease. He was beginning to gain an intuitive familiarity for this place; the memories no longer pulled him in uncontrollably; rather, they took on a shape that was almost corporeal, condensed like his breath fogging in the air, and he could touch them, brush them aside with numb, icy fingers.  

A vine of ivy grew away from the wall and wound itself around his legs; Albus pried it away as gently as he could, directing it back towards the stone. 

That strange, expansive feeling had left his chest and sank down to his stomach, shrinking and gaining weight as it went before finally settling as a ball of something cold and heavy. Closure, resolution; these were meant to be freeing. This detachment wasn’t freeing; it was thick and unwieldy, draining the movement from his limbs. 

 _I didn’t want your abstract, distant love._ The words cut deeply, because what else was he supposed to give? His “abstract, distant” love was something he had carefully curated over the years; sculpting and chiselling who he was into who the world _needed_ him to be. It was the work of a lifetime, fine-tuned and intricate, made up of a warm voice and gentle smile and quick humour, and a wall of impenetrable marble lying just beneath.   

It was _all he had_ (and it wasn’t enough).  

More vines wound themselves around him, and when Albus tried to pry them away again, the rock they clung to crumbled with them. 

* * *

  _“LOOK AT ME,” Harry demanded, voice raw and dripping in pain, and Albus flinched away._  

* * *

  _"Please look at me,” his sister whispered from the kitchen table, so young and frightened and alone, needing someone to hold on to, and Albus would never be that person; they both knew it._  

* * *

That “distant, abstract” love Ariana had chided him for was a tool, and it was excellent at what it did. It would allow him to save the world twice, if all went well; once directly and once by lining up the pieces from the shadows.  

But it would never, ever be  _enough._ It cracked under too-close scrutiny, and Ariana’s eyes had always been too sharp for him. He had always underestimated her; she was innocent, fragile and in need of protection, and it was so easy to forget that she _also_ had their mother’s Ravenclaw gift of insight, and she knew him far better than he’d thought – better, perhaps, than he’d _wanted_. 

She'd looked straight through him and seen his secret with resigned acceptance: that at his centre lay something cold, and hollow, and empty. 

He _wished_ he could be something else; wished he were more like Newt or Harry, with an inexhaustible well of authentic emotion to guide them true. He knew this thing he had was tenuous and synthetic, a sub-par replica of everything he admired. He knew it and _hated_ it, hated it more fiercely than anyone else ever could; but the ice still crept across the walls, the vines still curled around his limbs, and the walls remained marble and implacable. 

Another memory passed through his fingers and Albus let his hand linger on it for just an instant too long.

* * *

  _The Gryffindor common room was dark; everyone but Albus and_ _Elphias_ _had gone to bed hours ago, and the room was lit only by the tips of the boys’ wands as they studied in silence and Albus tried his best to ignore the glances his friend kept sneaking at him._  

 _The words swam across Albus’ vision and he rubbed at his eyes. It was late; this was becoming futile._ _Elphias_ _must have had a similar thought, because he put his book down with a sigh._  

 _“We should -”_ go to bed, _Albus would have said, but_ _Elphias_ _’ throat was working nervously and he hovered, mouth half-open._  

 _“Do you – I mean, would you -”_  

 _Albus stopped packing up his things and looked steadily back at his friend. “Yes?”_  

 _“Can I try something,”_ _Elphias_ _muttered, dropping his gaze and staring very hard at the table between them. It didn’t take a genius to grasp what he was asking; they were alone, and close, and the room was dimly lit, and they had only recently discussed their respective romantic preferences with one another. Albus couldn’t say that he was surprised; all things considered, this moment was inevitable. He had no idea what he_ did _feel, though; there was curiosity there, perhaps, but it was tinged with something strangely close to resignation._  

 _“Go ahead,” he said lightly, his voice showing no hint of his misgivings._  

 _Elphias_ _walked around the table carefully, almost reverently, and moved to where Albus sat. Their faces hovered inches from each other. It was strange to have his friend so close to him;_ _Elphias_ _had always kept a certain distance between them before, as if hyper-aware of Albus’ personal space._  

 _“Is this ok?” he whispered, an audible tremble in his voice._  

 _“It’s fine,” Albus said, not certain how else to answer; and then, in case that had been too brusque and forbidding, “go on.”_  

 _Calling what followed a kiss would be generous; it was a rather cold peck that lingered awkwardly for an extra second or two before_ _Elphias_ _stumbled back. It didn’t take more light than that available to them to see that his cheeks had turned deep red. “That was – nice,” he managed._  

 _“Yes,” Albus agreed quietly, “nice.”_  

 _It_ had _been nice, but that was_ all _it had been. Nice. Wasn’t he supposed to feel something more? Why didn’t he? He_ liked _Elphias_ _; they had been friends for five years and the boy was consistently supportive, considerate, trustworthy. It simply made sense for them to be together; two friends who shared all their secrets, who had known each other since they were eleven, who both happened to be interested in other men; what could be simpler, easier, more logical than falling into a relationship with one another?_  

 _The resignation he’d felt before tightened in Albus’ chest. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t what love was meant to feel like: a logical choice, a sinking realization of inevitability. Maybe he simply set his hopes unrealistically high, but – was it so wrong to want something_ more _?_  

* * *

It had been his first kiss, and also his least memorable. The memory only ingrained itself in his mind when he came back to it later, heartbroken and furious with himself, wondering why he couldn’t simply have felt what he was _supposed_ to, what could have made everyone happy.  

* * *

  _“Why couldn’t it have been me?”_ _Elphias_ _asked one night after a glass too many of butterbeer – or perhaps simply after enough glasses that he could blame his words on alcohol once regret caught up with him. “I wouldn’t - you know I would never have hurt you.”_  

 _Albus heard the unspoken words clearly enough: “_ not like him”. _And “_ why wasn’t _I_ good enough, when _Gellert Grindelwald_ was?”. _It was a fair question._ _Elphias_ _was a good person; a_ simple _person. Consistently kind, where Gellert had been sharp and rough around the edges. Loyal, where Gellert had been fickle. Understanding, where Gellert had been possessive. Humble and unassuming, where Gellert had wanted the whole world to be in awe of him, and Albus had been more than happy to oblige._  

 _“I don’t know,” Albus answered, and the words sounded hollow to his own ears. He wanted to say that he wasn’t certain he_ could _feel more; that he wasn’t made for the passionate, reckless kind of love that romance was made of, that his own emotions were too calm and collected and tightly bound for that._  

 _Except he_ had _felt more, hadn’t he? Both of them knew that, however distant and unreachable that kind of emotion felt to Albus now, however much he’d like to deny that it had ever been there._

* * *

  _Why wasn’t I good enough?_ The question echoed in Albus’ mind. He had never quite found a satisfactory answer to it. _You were_ was the _right_ thing to say, the answer he tried without fail to give, but it never rang true. 

Kind, loyal, humble, understanding. All of these were traits Albus respected, _admired_. Traits he would never feel he managed to live up to as well as he’d like.  

But he could never quite manage to _love_ them. 

 _Why couldn’t it have been me?_ Albus was fairly sure he’d always known the answer; he just hadn’t wanted to say it, or even think it. Now, the truth scraped against the surface of his mind, leaving icy white scratches in its wake. 

Albus never _would_ let himself love someone like Gellert Grindelwald again; he never _could_ make himself love someone who _wasn’t_ like him. 

* * *

 Albus leant back against the wall; something in his mind clicked, like a joint being forced back into place, like two halves of a broken plate being pushed back together. 

The back of his shirt was wet and cold, and Albus realized with a start that the ice was melting and retreating from him. The vines of ivy dried up and fell away, brittle and cracking.  

The wall behind him shifted, and Albus turned just in time to see the stone crumble away and reveal a gaping archway. 

Then he lost his footing, and fell through.


	4. Worthwhile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated for warnings, PLEASE TAKE NOTE.
> 
> I don't think this was what anyone had in mind when they said they were excited for Gellert to make an appearance, but there will be a proper conversation between them in the next chapter, I promise.

_"Valentine! Thank_ god. _Don’t you dare disappear like that._ _I thought you were dead! Or injured, or –_ _”_  

 _Albus turned reflexively before he even had the chance to realize that the_ _name_ _he’d responded to wasn’t his. A wave of relief washed through him at the sight of the woman who had called it, with fear treading swiftly on its heels. She was safe, but she shouldn’t_ be _there._  

 _The emotions passed, leaving Albus baffled. He had never seen this woman before, but his mind was suddenly flooded with memories of her – Valentine's, he presumed. Sitting on the porch with her head in his lap, playing with her hair. Reading a book while she rested her chin on his shoulder to read it with him. Cooking vegetables while she bounced a child on her knee and sang in French – a soft, lilting lullaby that Albus didn’t know, but that Val_ _entine could sing by heart._  

 _Albus closed his eyes and tried to pull away from the stranger’s memories. He felt like an intruder –_ was _an intruder, objectively speaking, not that he had any choice in the matter. If he’d_ had _a choice, he certainly wouldn’t have used it to watch someone else’s happiest, most intimate moments. As much as he wanted others to find love and happiness, this was too much, from too close up._ _The warmth jarred against his emptiness, left him acutely aware of the hollow space inside of him._  

 _The images stopped as suddenly as they’d started, a bleak mixture of desperation and resignation rushing in to replace them._  

 _“Are the children safe?” Valentine asked th_ _rough Albus’ mouth – or rather, Albus thought, through his own mouth while Albus looked on from inside his head._  

 _“- I – yes, they are, but...” the woman –_ Catherine, _Valentine’s thoughts supplied – began._  

 _“Good. Stay with them.”_  

 _A firm hand wrapped itself around Albus’ - no, Valentine’s - wrist. “Now is not the time to be brave or reckless. These people – they aren’t normal, you can’t fight them._ Please, _‘tine.”_  

 _“Rumours, my dear. Superstitious people will attribute anything to the devil, you_ know _this, and enemy soldiers will jump on any opportunity to spread fear. They are human, and they can be fought. Promise me you’ll stay here.”_  

 _Catherine looked at him with blazing, tear-stained eyes and Albus knew instantly that she was about to kiss Valentine. He jerked away instinctively – and was shocked to find that Valentine’s body obeyed him. Catherine looked hurt, and both inhabitants of Valentine’s mind were left reeling._  

 _It hadn’t occurred to Albus that he might be anything more than an observer in the scene. The idea of having control in a snapshot of someone else’s life left him uneasy. More likely than not this was all illusion, but he could not be absolutely, entirely certain_ _it_ _wasn’t real._  

 _His desire and Valentine’s in that moment of how to act aligned, at least. Turning away so as not to have to face Catherine any longer, Albus stepped out of the alleyway and into the main street._  

 _Both he and Valentine had seen enough death in their lives (Valentine’s mind supplied images of trenches, landmines, gas masks), but Albus’ stomach still twisted when he saw the bodies scattered across the street. Their intactness unnerved Valentine most. He’d seen people torn to shreds or blown apart, but these bodies looked like they had simply dropped where they were standing. Valentine would put on a brave face and call it “superstitious supernatural nonsense” to Catherine, but he couldn’t deny the chill that ran down his spine._ _Whatever it was_ _, it certainly wasn’t_ natural. 

 _It unnerved Albus too, but for entirely different reasons. Heavy footsteps echoed across the cobbles, resounding through the deathly silence like stones hitting the bottom of a well, and he knew exactly who he was about to face._  

 _Gellert_ _Grindelwald_ _picked his way through the bodies carefully, Elder Wand dangling loosely from his hand. Valentine’s fingers clenched around his rifle, screaming internally at Albus to lift it and take aim (a single opponent from up close, completely unguarded, how hard could it be) - but those thoughts felt muted, and he stood frozen as Gellert’s eyes latched onto him and he began to prowl closer, like a cat approaching its prey._  

 _Absurdly, Albus thought of the times Gellert would sneak up on him from behind when he was reading by the river, never failing to elicit a squeal or yelp from Albus. He waited for the look of intent concentration to dissolve into laughter, rolling Albus over through the overgrown grass to whisper “got you” in his ear while Albus swatted him and feigned annoyance._  

 _It didn’t happen, of course. Gellert’s face was a mask of stone that never wavered as he advanced. Albus refused to stand there like a deer in headlights; he unstuck his feet from the ground and began to walk towards Gellert. It was strangely, grimly gratifying to see Gellert’s eyes widen briefly with shock – any reaction he could draw from him felt better than the cold, impassive look he wore otherwise._  

 _The shock faded as quickly as it had arrived, however, and Gellert’s face returned to the same neutral expression but for a subtle upwards twitch of the lips._  

Shoot him, _Valentine screamed in Albus’ mind, fingers twitching helplessly._ You idiot, what do you think you’re doing? Just shoot him! He’s wide open! 

 _Albus directed a quick apology inwards. Trying to shoot would accomplish nothing, anyway; Gellert could easily block or deflect a bullet._  

 _A small part of him wondered if he shouldn’t try anyway, but he knew even as he thought it that he wouldn’t._  

 _“Gellert.” They were close enough now for Albus to see the various shifts in shade of Gellert’s grey eye. He was so used to watching them dance and sparkle with passion. The Gellert he knew was always in motion, jumping between ideas, between present and future, between emotions. This Gellert looked like he would freeze any_ _movement_ _that came near him in its tracks. “Stop this.” A useless plea, but one that Albus would recite over and over until his tongue tired of use, because there was nothing else to say._  

 _Gellert cocked his head, the full weight of his gaze falling on Albus, his eyes analysing, assessing._  

 _“Do I know you?”_  

 _The words were spoken lightly, but there was a palpable tension behind them, if one only Albus was likely to notice. They came out in a staccato, each carefully chosen, like plucking berries from brambles while trying not to prick himself on their thorns. Albus wondered if that tension came from the effort taken to push his humanity down into the furthest reaches of himself and hold this rigid, emotionless mask in place. A part of him – that part that still clung to delusion, to long-forgotten dreams and memories, the part that hoped and loved and, perhaps foolishly, insisted on seeing the best in people no matter how hard the world fought to convince him otherwise –_ needed _to believe this was the case, desperately, feverishly_ _so_ _. The alternative was that that other Gellert, the one that laughed and played harmless pranks just to hear Albus laugh as well, was the mask that had slid away like smoke when it was no longer needed._  

 _For just a moment, their eyes met properly, and Albus saw something there that he could not decipher – indecision, perhaps, or recognition. Then the moment passed, and Gellert’s face smoothed over. “Not that it matters,” he murmured, and Albus_ felt _himself be dismissed._  

 _Gellert raised the Elder Wand in the same instant that Valentine finally regained control and raised his rifle, and the street flashed green._  

 _From somewhere far away, Albus heard Catherine scream Valentine’s name._  

* * *

 

Albus came back to himself kneeling on cold cobbles. Green light burned the insides of his eyelids. He pressed the heels of his hands against them but it only made it brighter; tiny, acidic sparks fizzling in and out of existence. His chest stung; it was almost warm, where it had hit him, but the rest of his body felt cold and numb and heavy. A strange buzzing noise resonated through his head, like someone crinkling aluminium by his ear. 

For a while, he let the sensations consume him. They were painful, yes, but they kept him distracted, kept him from focusing on anything else. Every time his mind approached a state of focus it immediately withdrew; this constant buzzing sensation was easier to deal with. 

Eventually the feeling of static faded and the green dots cleared from his vision, and for the first time it hit Albus that he was well and truly dead. Not dreaming, nor hallucinating, nor taking the strangest trip through his pensieve of his lifetime, but dead. He had, after all, just shaken off the aftereffects of an _adava_ _kedrava_ curse; the living did not do that.  

Well, he thought wryly, the _vast majority_ of them did not, in any case. 

The solemn finality of that realization made what he had just seen worse, somehow. He was not in the middle of a war; he could not have acted differently to save Valentine; there had never been a chance of his pleas being heard. It had all already been written in stone, and that stone then eroded by time as it began to pass out of living memory. The story was written; he could only peruse it, now, predicting the twists that had blindsided him the first time and wishing he knew how they could be altered. 

He wondered if this was how Gellert had felt, looking to the future. Like he was walking down a path he had walked a hundred times before, but still couldn’t find a way to step off it. Or maybe he had never truly _wanted_ to step off it. Most of the horrors he’d foreseen, after all, he had ultimately brought about himself. 

It had felt so real, Gellert’s fear, when they had been together. The desperation honed into determination and bravado, into a restless need to _act_ before it was too late. It had resonated with Albus’ own disquiet, his sense of foreboding when he looked at the world around him and saw the fault lines strained to their limit.  

The image of Gellert’s face as he had raised his wand swam through Albus’ mind and that sense of resonance slammed into a stone wall. He had faced Gellert before, of course, seen him for who he was, but there was always _something_ there. Anger, spite, madness, betrayal... all of those were somehow easier to accept from him than this.  

Albus had been on the wrong end of Gellert’s wand, but he had never been regarded quite like that by him. As though he were _nothing._  

A choked sound escaped Albus. There were still ghosts of emotion floating through his head that were as much Gellert’s as his, feelings that _should not_ be possible to feign. It was possible to mimic normal human emotion through sufficient observation and practice, he knew that well, but to do so to the point that those emotions leapt to someone else and took root in them? That was like convincing a native speaker that you were fluent in a language when in fact you knew only a few words, and the most basic principles of grammar.  

And yet, to truly feel, and still kill with as little thought as swatting a fly, without even a change in expression... that was just as, if not more, incomprehensible to Albus. 

He had never found an answer in life, and now, he knew he never would. Those echoes, those ghosts of feelings, were left severed, their source now a yawning void.  

Fitting, Albus supposed, since he himself was a ghost now. 

Albus clambered to his feet. He felt strangely fragile – as though, should what he had just seen return in full force, it might bowl him over and scatter what remained of him like dust across the cobbled floor – but also, somehow, determined. He had faced the worst of his regrets, and was still standing. He could push through, dig up whatever demons were left and then find his way out of this maze. 

He recognized this corridor, he realized suddenly. The floor had changed from wood to cobbled stone but the barricaded doors were the same ones he’d passed before seeing Ariana. A door behind him hung ajar, as though blasted open with the force of the spell that sent Albus here. There was nothing behind it, just an empty space that stretched out endlessly. 

Albus glanced at the other doors. His efforts to open them had been futile before, but then, he hadn’t truly _wanted_ to succeed. Gathering all of his newfound conviction, he walked to the one that appeared weakest and pushed against it, putting his entire weight into the motion. For a few moments, it held fast, but then it gave.  

* * *

 

 _A lifetime played out before him_ _in snapshots_ _. Not the one he’d lived, though it started out the same._  

 _In this life, Albus accepted the position of Minister for Magic when it was offered to him after the duel. Not because he believed he deserved it, but because he was so very tired of standing on the side lines, watching the world descend_ _in_ _to_ _chaos_ _. Because he had finally gathered the courage to act, and was not quite ready to relinquish it. Because however little he trusted himself, he at the very least knew the depths of his failings, and he found he trusted anyone who might ask for the position in his stead far less._  

 _In this world, a second dark lord never rose to power. Instead, a strange young man shrouded in rumours was covertly assassinated not long after graduating from Hogwarts for the crime of being a little too curious, having a gaze a little too chilling, and overall reminding Albus Dumbledore of all the wrong things._  

 _Wizarding Britain entered one of the most peaceful eras it had encountered. The rest of the Europe, still recovering from Grindelwald, looked on in wonder. From up close, however, that peace was thinly stretched, as thinly stretched as Albus himself, who had given up a job he loved for one that was as much more draining as it was less rewarding; instead of the sincere joy of children discovering magic, he spent his days entertaining foreign diplomats and amusing himself by imagining the looks on their faces if he were to let his mask of politeness slip for a moment and inform them, in the same mild tone and with some very choice words, exactly what he thought of them._  

 _Contrary to his own expectations and apprehensions, Albus did not enjoy power. Perhaps he would have, if he had discovered it when he was younger. When it was still a_ _dream_ _and not a debt or penance. Most likely, he would have, had there been someone he could share it with, someone to offer a dramatic retelling of the more tedious moments, who would appreciate the full impact of his subtler manoeuvres. Whenever that thought occurred to him, he was glad that it felt like a chore, glad for how his days dragged on endlessly and every decision left him feeling like he had lost something of himself. That was how it should be._  

 _Under Albus’ rule, magic was highly regulated. The mere whisper of certain words – such as_ horcrux _or_ hallow _–_ _could bring a team of_ _aurors_ _to your doorstep to first politely suggest, and then more firmly insist, that you allowed them to help you forget where you had heard the word._  

 _It was not that Albus endorsed the concept of strict government censorship. He remembered all too well how he had chafed under the previous ministers’ restraints and constant hounding of him, and felt a certain amount of sympathy for those he targeted now. But, then, if his laws restrained people like him, perhaps that was a net gain for the world after all._  

 _He ran for a second term, and won easily, but only lasted a few months into it. A group of wizards dedicated to preserving knowledge of the Dark Arts decided this couldn’t be allowed to continue. Had Albus been operating in top form, they would never have stood a chance._  

 _As it was, however, Albus was distracted, listless and above all,_ _tired._ _He could not remember the last time he had felt an emotion that was not frustration, or had a thought that was not about policy. When the ambush came, he was almost grateful for it._  

 _The news spread like wildfire. Newspaper columnists fought for the opportunity to decide how to remember him.  Most went for the easiest route; beloved leader, bringer of peace, who died tragically. A few had the guts to suggest he’d been a tyrant, authoritarian, Machiavellian, portraying a front of reasonable compromise to the world while his enemies mysteriously vanished. Everyone remembered him, be it as a saint or as a despot, but no-one remembered him as a friend._  

 _Meanwhile, in a tower several countries away, a man who had only recently been locked away there read the headlines and laughed with a loud, ringing voice his cell could barely contain._  

* * *

 

The images of that other life faded gradually, in stark contrast with the violence with which he’d been thrown back into the corridor the time before that. This vision was much easier to process, in part because it was less painful but also, in part, because he knew with complete certainty that what it showed him had never truly happened.  

Did he wish it would have? It was, arguably, a better world. There was no Lord Voldemort there – though unrest had been brewing under a lid barely held in place, and he could not know how much of a splash it would have made when it simmered over after his death. Perhaps it would prove just as bad, in its own way; perhaps even worse. 

What he knew was that he did not like who he had become there. Personal touch and persuasion had been traded for signatures and whispered orders; sympathy for outcasts with a firm and unyielding suppression of anyone who stepped out of line, who displayed too much ambition or flirted with taboos. And, in the end, there had been no satisfaction, no fulfilment, only weariness.  

No, Albus decided. He had many regrets, but not choosing this path in life was far from one of them. 

He turned to the next door. It had been boarded up with planks of wood, but they were already hanging loosely, and it took almost no effort to pry them off.  

* * *

 

 _It was the five-year anniversary of Ariana’s death, and Albus’ first time returning to_ _Godric’s_ _Hollow since then. A chill ran through him as he passed familiar houses, though the air was light and summery._  

 _He had not informed anyone that he would be coming; not_ _Bathilda_ _Bagshot, who might have invited him over for tea, and certainly not_ _Aberforth_ _; his brother was maintaining a policy of icy silence, and Albus had in complete honesty to admit that it was probably better that way, for both of them._  

 _He only hoped_ _Aberforth_ _had not made his own, independent plans to visit; this was something Albus had to do alone._  

 _He let himself in. The air was damp, the house eerily dark; shadows flickered across the walls as the sun dropped beneath the horizon. The air tasted like death to Albus, but whether it was the house’s memory of what had occurred between its walls, his own mind playing tricks on him, or simply the foreknowledge of what he was here to do, he couldn’t say._  

 _The sleeping draughts were in a cupboard by the sink that only Albus had access to. He’d kept them for Ariana’s sake; left to simmer for several months and, when taken, the potion could gently ease someone into unconsciousness so both she and her brothers could have a restful night’s sleep._  

 _Left for longer than a year, and the consciousness it stole would not return._  

 _Albus’ hands shook as he poured out a full vial. That should be enough. The liquid had changed from the midnight blue colour it was supposed to be to inky black. He stared at it for a while as he tried to gather up the necessary conviction._  

 _It was an idea he had turned over often enough in the past, if only late at night in that moment just before sleep when one’s thoughts were loosest and most honest. When his nose ached in phantom pain from a fracture and_ _Aberforth’s_ _voice rang out clearly in his mind,_ why couldn’t it be you? 

 _Albus knew this wasn’t what his brother would want, not really – or, if it was, that he would never admit it, even to himself. That_ _Aberforth_ _would trade Albus for Ariana in a heartbeat if he could_ _was_ _beyond doubt, of course, but Albus dying now could not bring her back. They may have disliked each other – hated, even, on his brother’s side, but family was family and had meant more to_ _Aberforth_ _than it ever had to Albus._  

 _The thought of making_ _Aberforth_ _lose another sibling on the same day of the year when he had lost the first almost gave Albus pause, but he shrugged it off._ _Aberforth_ _would mourn him out of principle only, if at all, and Albus had only himself to blame for that fact._  

 _He had not been a good brother, or a good son, or even a good_ person. _He had been a good student (and a good lover, his mind supplied bitterly) perhaps, but even then, it was in all the wrong ways._  

 _He’d considered leaving a note, but to whom?_ _Aberforth_ _wouldn’t need one; any explanation Albus could offer him would be painfully obvious as it was._ _Elphias_ _would only misunderstand, misinterpret, and be hurt; he put too much faith in Albus, always had. He was still too new to his job to have formed any irreplaceable bonds with his colleagues, and..._  

 _Gellert, well, Gellert was not an option. He was the stain Albus needed to wash out, not a person he could possibly reach out to. Never mind that he had mentally penned that letter countless times inside his head, a rambling confessional that laid out every feeling of brokenness, of loneliness and isolation, that only Gellert had ever been privy to from him. It ran from angry and accusatory (_ you made me feel this way, what did you think would happen after you ran off? How dare you, you brought out the darkest parts of me and left me to face them alone _) to pleading and desperate (_ you must see how wrong we were, am I the only one of us who feels this guilt? It belongs to both of us. I have nothing left to make repairs with, but I am begging you, if you ever cared for me at all, do better _) to apologetic (_ as though the other boy would care, as though he wouldn’t laugh when he read the letter and realized Albus had thought perhaps he might _). In the end, none of it made it past the tip of his pen; he had no words left for Gellert, should never have had any for him at all._  

 _No, it was best to slip off quietly and leave as little mess as he could; he had made enough of a mess of the world in life. He was easily replaceable at Hogwarts; young, temporary teachers looking for experience came and went each year. His filing system for student reports was rather idiosyncratic, perhaps, but he’d left a detailed explanation for its use; beyond that, he would leave no other mark._  

 _He knew better than to think he would simply be forgotten straight away. The world was watching him; he had revelled in that gaze,_ before _. Brilliant, bright, full of potential... all words on the tip of people’s tongues when they met him, and all left him with a bitter taste now he had seen what that potential looked like._  

 _The world did not need his potential; indeed, it was far better off without another selfish young genius believing it to be his sandbox._  

 _What it needed was gentleness, patience and humility; love and a genuine desire to put others first. All traits Albus was running terribly low of, if he had ever truly had them._  

 _No. He could tear himself to pieces searching for what went wrong, flay himself with guilt and pick apart his every flaw, and he was not certain he would find a single good thing to offer the world; only despair._  

 _The vial taunted him. It would be so very simple to tip it back, to leave the world to those who deserved it._  

 _Two versions of Albus bled into one; the young teacher who saw no way to keep going, and the older one, the one who’d been watching the scene unfold from deep within his mind._  

 _This was where the young Albus had hesitated. Not because he did not truly believe the world would be better off without him, or because he didn’t want the pain and guilt to_ stop, _but because he couldn’t bear to leave things like this; to never have the chance to try again, to do better,_ be _better. Maybe it was merely the stubbornness of the eternal precocious student who could not just_ give up _and leave a problem unsolved that had saved him, urged him to throw the tiny vial of liquid as far away from himself as possible and collapse against the counter, shaking and sobbing but unmistakeably_ alive _._  

 _This time, though, that impulse was dampened by the knowledge from the depths of his mind that he_ had _tried; had lived out an entire life, made amends for some of his mistakes and grown from others. He no longer had to prove to himself that he was capable of being better; he had already done so._  

 _And so, there was nothing to stop him from drinking down the vial._  

 _The liquid was thick and difficult to swallow. It clung to his insides, lathering his throat and forming a solid ball in his stomach. For a few moments Albus simply stood there; his stomach rolled, wanting to expel the potion, but nothing came out. Then, suddenly, Albus convulsed, his knees gave out, and the floor rose up to swallow him._  

* * *

 

Albus was falling. 

He did not know from where, or to where. There had been a tower, hadn’t there? Yes, a tower and two boys, one blond and one brunet. One who wanted to kill him and the other to protect him, and he could not allow either to succeed. 

Was that right? He remembered it, but it was far away and dreamlike, and it jumbled with other memories – or dreams, whatever they were. A lake hidden in a cave, a cursed ring with a stone he’d never had a chance of resisting. A young girl crying out for him. A boy rolling him over in the grass, long blond hair tickling Albus’ face, intoxicating, surrounded by the smell of dew and parchment. Laughing against his neck as they both got drunk on promises. 

A room filled with letters, an endless hallway, shattered porcelain. A promise to his sister that he would be there for her in death as he never had in life. Ice around his heart, ice in mismatched eyes when they saw him as a stranger.  

He was falling away from all of it and a voice in his mind told him he should reach out and grab hold of something, some memory, some anchor, but it slipped away and letting go seemed so much easier. Why should he hold on? He had promised Ariana he would find her again but he had broken so many promises already and, in any case, no promise truly had hold over him down here; he could no longer be held to any debt or duty. 

The darkness didn’t seem so cold and bare anymore; it wrapped around him, warm and welcoming. Far better than those freezing corridors filled with memories and possibilities he didn’t want.  

Albus felt himself relax. He remembered, yes; remembered different things now. Waking to the sound of Fawkes’ song; the startled look on a student’s face when an enchanted snowball went astray and flew directly into Albus’ face. Working with the other teachers to put up decorations in the Great Hall, the inevitable dispute between Flitwick and Minerva as to whether red or green was a better colour for tinsel (and the equally inevitable argument as to whether they should use all four house colours before someone pointed out that blue and yellow were simply did not work for tinsel).  

Light tickled Albus’ face and his eyes flew open before he could even realize he had the choice to open them. 

* * *

 He was standing in his office. Everything was exactly as he’d left it; Albus marvelled at its familiarity. He’d arranged this place precisely to his tastes; the carvings, the boxes of sweets and tea. It was his final refuge, the place where he could plan and contemplate undisturbed. He took a certain amount of comfort in the belief that even at its darkest, the world would not dare encroach upon this room. 

Albus moved to stand by the window. The school grounds spread out before him, and a sense of bittersweet nostalgia filled his chest. He had been here mere hours before his death, but somehow it felt as though he were returning to a home he had not visited in years. He drank in the sights; the towering pines, the way the water sparkled on the lake’s surface. The mountains spreading out into the distance, cradling the school.  

He was so engrossed in the view, he barely noticed the voice behind him saying “Headmaster.” 

“Severus,” Albus acknowledge, surprised in equal parts by his presence and by the formality of the greeting. “What are you doing here?” 

“Looking around.” Severus’ eyes roamed the room, lingering on the pensieve. “You’ve left some very... _interesting_ things around here.” 

“Examining my memories?” Albus spread his hands. “Well, then. What do you make of them?” 

Severus’ lip curled, but there was no amusement in his eyes. “ _You disgust me._ ” 

Albus withheld a flinch. Well, then. He could not say he did not deserve to have those words thrown back at him. 

“You would lecture me, look down at me, play at being judge so I would hunger for a favourable verdict from you... all this time, were you any better?” 

Albus sighed. “I never claimed to be better.” 

“You implied it. With every word, with every gesture, you implied it.” 

He could not argue with that. “I merely acted like the man I wished to be. You had every option to do the same.” 

“ _Did_ I?” Severus sneered. “ _I_ never got to hide my past behind a mask of virtue and be admired. I accepted that; my mistakes would always stain me, however young I was when I made them.” 

“And you think mine do not?” 

“You certainly do not _show_ it. How could you? You would lose your power to wrap people around your finger, convince them to do _anything_ for the chance that you might deem them worthy of redemption.” 

“You are angry.” Albus closed his eyes, breathed deeply. “You have the right to be. I didn’t mean for you to feel deceived -” 

“No, you _just so happened_ to tell me just enough so you had power over me.” 

“What would you rather I had done? Share all of my regrets so that you could feel better about your own? The truth about my life doesn’t change the details of your own. We were both best suited to different playing different parts, but just because I _played_ a part does not mean I believed it. I may have kept my mistakes from the world, but I never hid them from myself.” 

“I would rather that, for once in your life, you did not obfuscate. I would rather you gave me the truth.” 

“The truth.” What good would the truth do here? The truth was poisonous, hurtful, when the image he had crafted was so much cleaner. 

Still, Severus had done so much for him. Had risked his life, had lied for him, had even killed him despite all his misgivings when it was needed. Albus could at least grant this request. “The truth, Severus, is that I envied you.” 

“ _Envied?_ What could you possibly envy from me?” 

Of all the questions he had asked that night, this was the simplest to answer. “Love.” 

Severus’ chuckle was bitter and hollow. “My _love_ is hardly something to be envied.” 

“I disagree. You’ve seen my past, have you not? You know where our paths were the same, and where they diverged. You were able to count on your love to drag you back into the light. However much you suffered for it, at the end of the day, you listened to your heart and it saved you, whereas I had to fight mine every step of the way to keep myself from falling into darkness. Is that not something I can envy?” 

Albus had closed his eyes again half-way through his sentence, and kept them that way as he waited for an answer, but all he received was silence. When he opened them again, he was alone.  

* * *

 

Albus slumped into a chair, feeling utterly drained, but not necessarily worse off for it. It occurred to him that perhaps that truth had been verbalized for his sake, more so than Severus’. He rarely found himself resenting his lot in life; he had been fortunate in many ways, and in those in which he had not, it was for the most part easier to blame himself than to blame fortune. Still, perhaps he was not entirely absent of bitterness, and he felt better for having confessed to it. That way, it was merely a statement of fact about how he felt, rather than something that wound itself about his heart unacknowledged. 

The door to his office swung open and Minerva stopped in the middle of the floor, looking at him with complete bemusement. “...Albus?” 

“Minerva.” Albus smiled. “Please, come in.” 

“I - yes, of course.” Her eyebrows rose above her glasses, though her face was otherwise composed. “This is a dream, isn’t it.” 

“I know precisely as much as you do – or, more likely, much less. Tea?” 

“I believe I should be the one to offer you that. You know, it feels quite strange to be invited into my own office.” 

“Ah. It’s yours now? I’m glad to hear it.” 

“We won, you know,” Minerva said, placing a cup of green tea in front of Albus. It smelt faintly of strawberries. “I thought you might be wondering.” 

“I assumed as much, when you said this was your office now. You haven’t changed it much to make it yours.” 

“I didn’t feel the need to.” She turned to look at him, and Albus found to his surprise that her eyes were glittering with tears. “It was worth it,” she said. “Everything you did – it was worth it. We’ve rebuilt the castle and... we’re healing. Slowly, but it’s happening. Things are still fresh, and raw, but there’s a new generation that doesn’t remember living constantly in fear.” A wistful expression crossed her face. “You should be here to see it.” 

“I’m more than happy to hear about it from you.” 

“Then I will tell you.” She took a sip of tea and Albus mirrored the motion. “Though first, I must say I do have one complaint about how you left your office. Do you even _have_ a filing system? There seems to be one, but I can make neither head nor tail of it.” 

“I left an explanation,” Albus mentioned. “It’s quite detailed.” 

“Yes, I believe I found it.” Minerva frowned. “The explanation more indecipherable than the files themselves.” 

Albus laughed, and Minerva laughed with him. As they did so, he felt a weight lift off him. Whatever his own regrets in life, it would seem he had left behind a world where others, at least, could find happiness. As she began to tell a tale of Hogwarts’ new era, Albus found he could lose himself in it, and for at least a moment, he forgot all else.


	5. Conclusion

The peace he had found in his office could not last him forever. As Minerva, too, vanished,  Albus found himself alone again, and the room began to change – or, rather, his perception of it changed. The walls felt flimsy, the light wan and washed out. Albus got to his feet and began to pace a well-worn track across the carpet. The motion was familiar, but felt different this time. There were no pressing plans to be made, no crisis to be dealt with or even something as mundane as assignments to mark crowding his mind. Instead of sorting through his inner clutter, he found himself moving to avoid its absence.

His office was beginning to feel more like a cage than a refuge – small and contained, keeping him from whatever it was that lay beyond. 

Something had shifted, Albus could sense it. He was no longer trapped in a maze of corridors and memories; the end was in sight. He just had to reach out for it. 

He hesitate d .

Freedom; it had been the one thing he’d chased beyond all else, a lifetime ago. Then,  _ after,  _ he had buried it under layers of responsibilities, horrified at its cost.

Now? Now it stretched out beneath his fingers, and it terrified him.

* * *

 

Albus’ stomach gave a strange lurch of vertigo as he pushed open his ornate office door. Stairs wound round the tower, disappearing into the distance far beyond where  they should have ended. As he climbed a breeze began to blow past him, carrying in the scent of pines, and Albus felt his stomach twist further. 

* * *

 

Albus emerged to breath in a lungful of alpine air that burned his throat on its way down for reasons entirely unrelated to its quality. He knew where he was, of course. How could he not? 

But he was not prepared. He could wait a thousand years, and he would never be prepared for this.

_ When caring becomes too much for you, you lock it up and throw away the key.  _ Ariana’s words rang through his mind; but then, what choice had he ever had?

_ You could have come see him. _ To indulge in sentiment, bring back to the surface a strength of emotion he had not felt in so long he’d lost track, or to kill those same feelings by finally destroying the last of the illusion Gellert had crafted for him that summer?

It did not matter. He hadn’t had the strength for either.

“It takes death to bring you here, then.”

Gellert’s voice had changed. It was raspier, and had exchanged its passion and wildness for a quieter kind of gravitas; but hearing it still made Albus feel like he’d plunged into  an  icy,  bottom less  pool of  crystalline water. It was a feeling of cool clarity that rippled out from his centre,  leaving it impossible for him to hide .

For all the control Albus had gained over himself over time, it seemed Gellert Grindelwald could still read him well enough to give the impression of plucking words directly from Albus’ mind.

“I suppose I had to come, eventually,” Albus answered evenly.

“Is that what this is? You  _ had to  _ come?”

Albus drew in a breath silently before turning to face Gellert.

In one way, it was like staring at a stranger; in another, it held the same familiarity as seeing his own reflection. Gellert’s face was lined and creased, his cheeks hollow, eyes feverish and fixed directly on  Albu s, limbs resting over each other in a strange, angular fashion. This was not the teenager he’d met, with sharp, restless eyes and a smirk that flit constantly to and from his lips, who spoke in a low, certain, fierce voice of what would be (what had been, by now). Nor was he the frozen statue that had stalked the streets of Europe and killed as easily as breathing, or the force of sheer rage and spite Albus had duelled against. This was something entirely different, yet it tugged at Albus with something  like déja vu.

Albus mentally saved the image and added it to his catalogue of fragments of Gellert that he’d collected since the image he’d first had of him  was so violently shattered. Every time he and Gellert had crossed paths since,  even when only though hearsay, Gellert had been a different person, and Albus wondered if all those people would ever fit together into a single, seamless whole again, or if he would always be left with missing pieces.

He wondered, too, if he had any right to wish to hold those pieces. Historians would likely debate forever how Grindelwald had become the man he was. Why should Albus alone be granted answers?

“I wrote, you know,” Gell ert said. His voice was almost a whisper, something easily lost in the wind, but Albus could make out each word perfectly. “Everything I’ve seen... trapped in here, there was nothing to do but look, and I let my mind wander. Pages and pages... I thought that maybe, when I died, it would occur to someone to bring them to you. You always did enjoy my letters.”

Albus tried not to think too hard of those pages lost. More likely than not, he hadn’t been deprived of any true explanation, any insight he was missing. Gellert could weave dozens of stories and make each more compelling and believable than the last, but the truth would always fall through somewhere between them. “I did once,” he said. “I have learned to see through your eloquence, since.”

Gellert smiled. It was wide and toothy; not quite warm, but not quite  _ not  _ so, either. “Ah, but this was different. In those days I was burning to impress you, win you over, but now I know where our sides fall. I simply wanted you to see what I have seen. Of course, I never accounted for the fact you might die first.”

Albus remained silent. He had never had this kind of frankness from Gellert before without ulterior motive but try as he might, he could not find one here. 

But then, he supposed, there was always the possibility that none of this was true, and his mind was simply offering him the closure he had always wanted and never gotten.

“Do you know,” Gellert continued, “it’s said that all seers go mad in the end. That they are unable to bear the weight of knowledge, and must always fracture under it.”

“They?” Albus asked, and Gellert smiled again. It was a smile that spoke of secrets, invited you to try to pry them loose.

“ _ We.  _ You must count yourself lucky, that your current pet Seer remembers none of what she’s seen.”

“Trelawny is not my “pet”.”

“No, I should certainly  _ hope  _ not,” Gellert said, mouth taking on a bitter twist. 

Albus leant back against the bare stone wall and breathed out, finding himself suddenly exhausted. “Is that how you would excuse yourself, then? Through madness?”

Gellert’s laughter rang out, echoing from all sides of the small, dingy room. “Oh, no. No, no, no. The last thing I want is to deny responsibility for my actions. I knew  _ exactly  _ what I was doing. I do not deny who I am,  _ Albus. _ ”

The accusation –  _ unlike you –  _ hung in the air between them. Albus shifted uncomfortably under it.

“I do not deny who I am, either,” he said quietly. “I know I can be cruel, and cold, but I will not let those things reign over me.”

Gellert sat up at that, face twisting. “Oh, is that  _ so _ ? That’s not how I remember you. You were always the one with justifications; everything had to have a  _ reason  _ for you. That’s why you latched on to me, isn’t it? I was a convenient outlet for your frustrations, an adolescent rebellion before you went back to being the Ministry’s golden boy and deny ever being anything else. And I was foolish enough to believe you  _ meant  _ it.”

_ He’s manipulating you,  _ the voice of caut ion whispered in Albus’ head.  _ Twisting the narrative, again, playing at being hurt to paint himself as your victim. _

And yet -

“Is that truly what you think happened? That  _ I  _ was the one to use  _ you?” _

Gellert laughed, and the sound left a hollow space in Albus’ chest. “Is it not? Oh, I’m sure you think yourself above such things. I’m quite certain you’ve convinced yourself you truly loved me, yet it came so  _ easily  _ to you to cast me aside once you’d had your fill of flirting with darkness.”

Albus’ eyes stung. “How can you think it was  _ easy _ ? If you understood -”

If he hadn’t known better, he would have said Gellert’s face was as sad and drained as he felt. “No, you’re right,” he said. “I never understood you ; I still don’t .  It is the one thing that haunts me, that circles my thoughts.  I understood parts – the parts I recognized in myself – and conveniently ignored the rest, until it was too late. I never understood how you could choose a life that cannot  _ po _ _ ssibly  _ satisfy you – how you would give yourself to those who would never hold a candle to your potential. I never understood how you could see the world as it is, yet still think a gentle touch is enough to fix it. But above all, I  _ do not understand  _ how you can speak of love as something all-powerful, and still believe you can tame and imprison it.” 

Albus’ gut twisted. He hated how easily he saw himself mirrored in Gellert’s words; for all his claims of not understanding, he seemed able to pin Albus down and lay him out perfectly. 

“It isn’t like that,” he said. “It isn’t a matter of denying what I feel, but of looking beyond it. For all that you are a seer, you can be remarkably short-sighted. There is so much more in the world deserving of my love; if I could not make myself feel what I should have, I still would not let it burn in the name of my selfish passions.”

Gellert threw his head back. “Oh, but that is what love  _ is,  _ isn’t it? Choosing one person out of millions to put above all else?” He leaned in towards Albus, like he was about to let him in on a secret. “ _ The world was meant to burn.  _ That is what  _ you  _ never understood, because you do not know what it is to see how all things will end. If you managed to stay my hand – if you manage, posthumously, to stay this Riddle boy’s - if the muggles recover from all their own wars and do not blow themselves up and us alongside them – it still will not be over. The planet itself is trying to reject humanity; in a hundred years, perhaps, this will all be ashes. I thought freeing magic, using it to rule over all others, could save us, but now I believe magic is no exception.  Every thing has its own destruction written into it; my irony is that I saw this in everything else, but not myself.”

“I refuse to believe that,” Albus answered. “Your visions were always distorted by what you were willing to see; it may be easier for you to believe things to be beyond saving, but that doesn’t make it  _ true.  _ You could have chosen differently.”

“No.” Gellert’s voice was ragged. “I would always have been who I am. I was always meant to run  _ towards  _ destruction when everyone else runs from it.”

Albus breathed in deeply. The air tasted of ice and pine and stone, unyielding and unforgiving. It tasted of Gellert.

It hurt, that Gellert could not recognize the potential for good within himself. It had been there, once, however deeply obscured. In his passion, his conviction, his ability to cut straight to the heart of an issue; in those rare moments of thoughtful silence when he stopped trying to convince and allowed himself to simply think. Time had trampled over it, and now no-one but Albus would ever see it – not even Gellert.

“You know,” Gellert said suddenly, “for the longest time, I tried to hate you. I was always far better at it then you. In fact, I came very close to succeeding, but in the end I could not. I tried to imagine you were suffering, that you  _ could not possibly  _ be happy, but after a while it just felt bitter, and too sharp for me to cling to. I will never be free of you, will I?”

Albus exhaled. He could not bear this any longer – the talking circles around each other, throwing meaningless words at unhealed wounds. “What do you want from me, Gellert?”

“What I want?” Gellert looked at him in amusement. “Would you grant it if I told you, darling?”

Albus flinched. “ _ Do not  _ call me that.” He drew in a deep breath, composed himself. “I would if I can, and if I believe I should.”

“Always so many clauses with you.” Gellert sobered and his gaze drifted somewhere beyond Albus. “As I said - I’ve spent a lot of time alone in my head, since you’ve imprisoned me here. I wanted to give you my thoughts, unfiltered and unprocessed this time, even where they would make you shrink away in horror or disgust. And in exchange I wanted you to help me understand what it is that’s always eluded me about you.”

Gellert reached out a hand towards Albus and Albus regarded it, frowning. 

“I want you to stop trying so hard to be selfless and give in to what we were meant to be. I want you to stop trapping us both here because you cannot even face what happened, much less release it. I want you to join me so I am not alone in looking back at our lives and watching the world unfold around me.  _ Can you give me that? _ ”

Albus stared at the outstretched hand. 

_ He has killed so many. To forgive him now would be to spit on all you’ve fought for - _

_ I’ve fought all my life. Why must I keep doing so in death? _

_ He cannot be trusted. You know better by now than to believe - _

_ Precisely. I know better; I will not listen blindly and perhaps – this time – I might even win some honesty from him. _

_ I am so tired of fighting a constant uphill battle with myself. A battle that, perhaps, I have already won in every instance that counts. Why should I  _ not  _ surrender now?  _

Slowly, wordlessly, Albus reached out to take Gellert’s hand.

As it tightened around his, Gellert Grindelwald’s face melted away, and Death greeted Albus Dumbledore as an old friend.


End file.
